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Jay Jay the Jet Plane
Jay Jay the Jet Plane is a CGI/live action musical children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. It has about 60 episodes and is aimed at ages 2–7. The series is centered on a group of anthropomorphised aircraft who live in the fictional city of Tarrytown. The episodes are commonly distributed in 25-minute-long (as without commercials) pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair. Each episode contains one or more songs. The theme song and the majority of the other songs were written by well-known children's singer/songwriter Stephen Michael Schwartz and sung by his popular musical group, Parachute Express. Created by David and Deborah Michel, the series is intended to be educational and to teach life and moral lessons to children (and sometimes also to parents), although it has received extreme criticism for coming across as frightening, seeing as the planes are portrayed with large, bloated human faces. History In 1994, a short live-action series was produced at AMS Production Company in Dallas, Texas, with real model plane characters and animated crafted human characters; they didn't talk, but had the same personalities as in the later series. This original series was narrated similarly to early episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine or Theodore Tugboat.Amazon.com Jay Jay's First Flight VHS It contained three videos: Jay Jay's First Flight, Old Oscar Leads the Parade, and Tracy's Handy Hideout. These three episodes were known as the "pilot series". On November 2, 1998, the CGI/live action series premiered on The Learning Channel. Debi Derryberry took on the role of Jay Jay after Bergman's death in 1999 with no new characters voiced by her. The Learning Channel removed the series in March 2000. On June 11, 2001, all episodes began broadcasting on PBS Kids; the end credits have changed and additional episodes were created in 2001 and 2005. Home video editions were released by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment through 2003 as part of their "Columbia TriStar Family Fun" collection. Additional distribution was added with Tommy Nelson, the children's division of book publisher Thomas Nelson, although the series isn't overtly "Christian". Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman provided the original voice of Jay Jay and several other characters. After her death, Debi Derryberry replaced her. In 2005, new episodes were produced featuring additional characters, including the red Latino plane Lina. Each episode begins featuring a "Jay Jay's Mysteries" segment in which Jay Jay and Lina explore such things that may be mysteries to the intended age group, such as how planes fly and how the five senses are used. The mysteries segment is followed by a story that comes from the original episodes of the series so in effect the new series repackages previously broadcast content. Characters The planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters, while the humans are live action actors. Relationship words for the airplane characters refer to being in loco parentis for purposes of upbringing and education, not to biological parenthood. The story says that (some of) the airplane characters were made in factories. Some of the stories describe characters as doing actions off-screen that would need foldaway arms (e.g. Big Jake digging holes), but those arms are never seen on screen. Production The series was produced by Modern Cartoons in Oxnard, California, USA. Unlike Thomas the Tank Engine, this series used a variety of animation techniques: *The backgrounds were miniature sets (usually built on two 4 by 8 feet (1,200 mm × 2,400 mm) sheets of plywood). *Brenda Blue was a live action actress shot in front of a greenscreen. *The planes were computer models created in Maya and a proprietary software. *The movement of the planes was recorded by playing out the scene with wood models equipped with magnetic position sensors. The planes had a switch to aid landing and taxiing, due to some minor fluctuations in the magnetic positioning data. *The planes' faces and lip synching were done by face tracking, a technique where reflective spots are put on a voice actor's face. The voice track is digitally recorded along with the spot data. Then the face is rendered using a form of parametric animation. *Head movement and other effects were done by joysticks. The complex mathematical and CGI issues were solved by Frank Ford Little, PhD. A number of proprietary software systems were used: *Data/audio recording and smoothing were done on a Windows machine. *Daily cuts were done on "Compaq Alpha" computers running a 64-bit version of Windows NT 4.0. Episodes Main article: List of Jay Jay the Jet Plane episodes Broadcasting United States The series was broadcast over many of the 379 member stations of PBS Kids in the United States. Translations In foreign versions of the show, the human characters are often replaced with different actors. For example, in the Korean version of the show, a Korean actor takes the role of Brenda. Unusually, the Irish version of Jay Jay the Jet Plane mostly uses non-native speaker actors from Belfast (although some minor parts are played by native-speaking actors from the Gaeltacht). Europe *United Kingdom **The series is broadcast in English on Channel 5 and Discovery Kids and in Welsh on S4C called Ari Awyren http://www.s4c.co.uk/ariawyren/index2.htm *France **The series is known as Jay Jay le Petit Avion ("Jay Jay the Small Jet") *Spain **The series is known as Jay Jay, el avioncito *Ireland **The series was broadcast in Irish Tadhg an t-Eitleán ("Tadhg the Plane") and English *Portugal **The series is known as Jay Jay, o Jatinho ("Jay Jay the Jet")http://www.tvebrasil.com.br/jayjay/ Asia *Malaysia **The series was formerly shown in original version on TV2 in the early 2000s (decade). It was also dubbed in Malay by Filem Karya Nusa and aired on Astro Ria, also in the early 2000s (decade). It was later shown with new episodes on Astro Ceria in 2009 where the Malay dubbing is made in-house. *Singapore **The series formerly aired on MediaCorp TV12 Central. *Japan **ジェイジェイジェットプレーン (Jei Jei Jetto Purēn) *Russia **The series is known as Реактивный самолётик ("Jet Airplane"). *Syria **جاي جاي جيت الطائرة (Jay Jay Jayt Alttayira) References Category:Television series Category:1998 television series debuts Category:2005 television series endings Category:1990s television series Category:2000s television series Category:PBS Kids shows Category:Television series with live action and animation Category:Computer-animated television series Category:Films, TV Shows And Wildlife Wiki Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 4, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 5, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 6, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 7, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 8, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 9, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 10, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 11, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 12, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 13, 2004) Category:The Kids' Network Jr. TV Schedule (June 14, 2004)